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DEPARTMENT OF NEUROSCIENCE AND PHARMACOLOGY UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN presents Distinguished Seminars in Neuroscience and Pharmacology Robert J. Zatorre Montreal Neurological Institute & BRAMS Laboratory McGill University, Montréal, Canada presents “Music in the Brain: Pitch, Plasticity, Imagery and Emotion” Wednesday, October 26th, 2011, 3:00-4:00 p.m. Hannover Auditorium, the Panum Institute, Blegdamsvej 3, 2200 Copenhagen N Meet the speaker and your colleagues! The department serves light refreshments after the lecture Abstract How does the brain allow us to perceive music? How do we imagine musical sounds? Why does music elicit emotion? Neuroscientists are increasingly interested in such questions because music can be a powerful way to reveal the inner workings of the nervous system. The lecture will touch on three topics. First, we discuss functional and structural brain imaging data which identify specializations for pitch perception in right auditory cortex. These specializations are relevant to plasticity because they can also be modified by musical training. Moreover, anatomical cortical features in these same regions are predictive of behavioral performance on melody perception tasks, suggesting that predispositions may also exist. Second, we deal with studies of musical imagery. Using experimental tasks which require active retrieval and imagery of melodies, we can identify auditory cortical regions recruited both by real and imagined music. The final topic, music and emotion, is of interest because emotion is such an integral part of music. We have concentrated on musical pleasure; findings from these studies indicate that strong positive emotion in music seems to be mediated via the mesolimbic dopaminergic system, typically concerned with biological reward and motivation. Further, we can dissociate distinct dorsal and ventral striatal contributions to anticipatory vs. experiential components of music processing, respectively. Such findings raise additional questions about the broader role of music in human experience. Selected publications Zatorre, R.J. and Halpern, A.R. (2005) Mental Concerts: Musical imagery and auditory cortex. Neuron, 47, 9-12; Foster, N.E.V. and Zatorre, R.J. (2010) Cortical structure predicts success in performing musical transformation judgments. NeuroImage, 53, 26-36; Salimpoor, V.N., Benovoy, M., Larcher, K., Dagher, A., and Zatorre, R.J. (2011) Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music. Nature Neuroscience, 14, 257-262. NB: PhD students get 1 ECTS point for attending 8 INF seminars – respectively ½ ECTS for 5 INF seminars